At Launch, Does Wii U Lack a Game That Matches the Wii?

Nintendo’s Wii U game console, which hit stores on Sunday, gives players a second screen besides the television.

By Ian Sherr and Matthew Lynley

When the Nintendo Wii launched, it brought with it early two titles that blew away most gamers: “Wii Sports” and “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.”

Checking Metacritic, a site that aggregates critical reviews of games and other entertainment, both of those games fared particularly well among Web reviewers: “Wii Sports” scored a 76 out of 100, and “Twilight Princess” launched with 95 out of 100.

The first score is OK, but the second elevates “Twilight Princess” to the status of being one of the highest-rated games of all time.

The Wii U launched on Sunday, but it doesn’t appear to a game that has the same blowout performance as “Twilight Princess.”

The core launch game based on its existing franchises for the Wii U, “New Super Mario Bros. U,” scored an 82 out of 100. “Nintendo Land,” a party-themed game that might be more adequately compared to “Wii Sports,” scored 76 out of 100.

Granted, the verdict on Super Mario’s latest game isn’t in yet — and these scores could change, and might not be fully indicative of the actual quality of the game — but it doesn’t appear there will be a game that’s on the same level of “Twilight Princess” at the launch.

Nintendo always has placed a lot of emphasis on its first-party games, like Zelda and Mario. Along with “Twilight Princess,” its Mario franchise had a smash hit with the “Super Mario Galaxy” series, scoring 97 out of 100 with its sequel “Super Mario Galaxy 2″ on the Wii.

This launch on the Wii U is in contrast to the launch of Nintendo’s 3DS, which didn’t offer any new games from the company’s big-name brands when it went on sale. But “New Super Mario Bros. U” doesn’t seem to have the same amount of juice that “Twilight Princess” had. Eurogamer writes in its review, “Is the plumber’s Wii U debut as good as his recent 3D outings? Not quite, but for the New Super Mario Bros. series, it’s a real step forward in detailing, imagination and character.”

All the people that are crazy about Pokemon, they will buy the hardware that is adapted to it. It will help them to have a platform that is a place where they can have their games and where you will follow the rules of that platform. It enables them to have a good ecosystem that works for their brands and allows them to spend more money to create the best quality they can. I think it’s a good approach knowing their brands are so big they can make you go and buy the system.

The reaction so far among reviewers for the Wii U seems positive, but has a bit of a “wait and see” vibe. The software isn’t fully baked yet and while there’s a decent line-up of games, all the pieces aren’t quite there, according to some reviewers.

Without a massive launch title, it’s not clear whether Nintendo will be able to sell out its Wii U console devices into scarcity the way it was able to the last time around. Even still, the Wii’s annual sales have fallen rapidly in the past few years, from a peak of 21.4 million units sold to 11.2 million in 2011, according to research firm Wedbush Securities.